LONDON
\nLondon\u2019s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan on Saturday secured a record third term, dealing the Conservatives another damaging defeat in their worst local election results in recent memory months before an expected general election.
\nKhan, 53, easily beat Tory challenger Susan Hall to scupper largely forlorn Tory hopes that they could prise the UK capital away from Labour for the first time since 2016.
\nThe first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when first elected then, he had been widely expected to win as Labour surge nationally and the Conservatives suffer in the polls.
\nIn the end, he saw his margin of victory increase compared to the last contest in 2021.
\nIt adds to a dismal set of results for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, as his Tories finished a humiliating third in local council tallies after losing nearly 500 seats in voting Thursday across England.
\nWith Labour making huge gains, the beleaguered leader\u2019s Conservatives lost crunch mayoral races in Manchester, Liverpool, Yorkshire as well as the capital and elsewhere.
\nIn the West Midlands, where Tory incumbent Andy Street is bidding for his own third term, votes were reportedly being recounted and too close to call.
\nAn unexpected Tory defeat there could leave Sunak with only one notable success: its mayor winning a third term in Tees Valley, northeast England \u2014 albeit with a vastly reduced majority.
\nWriting in Saturday\u2019s Daily Telegraph, Sunak conceded \u201cvoters are frustrated\u201d but insisted \u201cLabour is not winning in places they admit they need for a majority.\u201d
\n\u201cWe Conservatives have everything to fight for,\u201d Sunak argued.
\nLabour, out of power since 2010 and trounced by Boris Johnson\u2019s Conservatives at the last general election in 2019, also emphatically snatched a parliamentary seat from the Conservatives.
\nIt seized on winning the Blackpool South constituency and other successes to demand a national vote.
\n\u201cLet\u2019s turn the page on decline and usher in national renewal with Labour,\u201d party leader Keir Starmer told supporters Saturday in the East Midlands, where the party won the mayoral race.
\nSunak must order a general election be held by January 28 next year at the latest, and has said he is planning on a poll in the second half of 2024.
\nLabour has enjoyed double-digit poll leads for all of Sunak\u2019s 18 months in charge, as previous Tory scandals, a cost-of-living crisis and various other issues dent the ruling party\u2019s standing.
\nOn Thursday, they were defending nearly 1,000 council seats, many secured in 2021 when they led nationwide polls before the implosion of Johnson\u2019s premiership and his successor Liz Truss\u2019s disastrous 49-day tenure.
\nWith almost all those results in by Saturday afternoon, they had lost close to half and finished third behind the smaller centrist opposition Liberal Democrats.
\nIf replicated in a nationwide contest, the tallies suggested Labour would win 34 percent of the vote, with the Tories trailing by nine points, according to the BBC.
\nSky News\u2019 projection for a general election using the results predicted Labour will be the largest party but short of an overall majority.
\nIts by-election scalp in Blackpool \u2014 on a mammoth 26-percent swing \u2014 was the Conservatives\u2019 11th such loss in this parliament, the most by any government since the late 1960s.
\nSpeculation has been rife in Westminster that restive Tory lawmakers could use the dire local election results to try to replace him. But that prospect seems to have failed to materialize.
\nHowever, it was not all good news for Labour.
\nThe party lost control of one local authority, and suffered some councillor losses to independents elsewhere, due to what analysts said was its stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
\nPolling expert John Curtice assessed there were concerning signs for the opposition.
\n\u201cThese were more elections in which the impetus to defeat the Conservatives was greater than the level of enthusiasm for Labour,\u201d he noted in the i newspaper.
\n\u201cElectorally, it is still far from clear that Sir Keir Starmer is the heir to (Tony) Blair.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON London\u2019s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan on Saturday secured a record third term, dealing the Conservatives another damaging defeat in their worst local election results in recent memory months before an expected general election. Khan, 53, easily beat Tory challenger Susan Hall to scupper largely forlorn Tory hopes that they could prise the UK capital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-404724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n